by Aaron Crash
Chapter Thirty-One
TIME STOPPED ON THAT wet, walled battlefield for me as I looked into the eyes of the dead woman.
For a split second, I was taken back to Azrack.
Reggie and I were in that desert cave, standing over the lifeless body of my uncle. Jared was in his jeans and a Halestorm T-shirt with his own blood on his boots. He seemed dead.
He wasn’t. My sister had always been smarter than me. I was better looking, or so I would say to tease her, but she was a clever one.
Jared had a leather satchel over his shoulder. Inside it was Icharaam’s Orb, the magic item that had helped him to live free of the disease that had threatened his life. The minute Reggie touched the orb, the magic inside hit Jared with a fresh dose of Animus. He sucked in a huge new breath. His flesh was fixed, and he grinned. “Did you really think death was going to stop me, Axel?”
Those words came back to me, in Foulwater, as the battle raged.
Jared, Reggie, and I had freed the town of Giraud from Rattletrap, and later, with the full strength of my family, we killed all the other assholes on Azrack. We made that planet a paradise, but it had started with Giraud. It had started with Jared’s sacrifice. Only a miracle had brought him back.
Dragonsouls are immortal—the energy in our bodies stops the normal aging process. The thing is, we die all the time because a dragon’s life is marked by sex and violence. In either case, there are casualties.
Yet, while we have life, we have fire.
If we could bring peace to Azrack, I could improve things on Caranja. There, in Foulwater, I started humming my birth song, remembering how good I felt when Jared opened his eyes. My uncle showed me that my family didn’t stop. Ever.
Standing to my full height, I set my front claws on the wall, opened my mouth, and hit those incoming flying fish soldiers with every bit of flame I had inside me. Flesh seared to ash. A few of the flying fish lost their wings and went headfirst into the wall. Other riders screamed as the inferno melted their armor into their skin.
Some merfolk leapt off onto the wall, but I bashed their heads in with the stone staff. Others I lashed back with my tail.
I’d defended my section of the battlements, but most of the flying fish soared over our walls to land on the docks. The fish squirmed themselves back into the water, flopped on the docks, or simply lay motionless. Their riders, however, immediately attacked Foulwater’s defenders. The brave townspeople were driven back against the wall. Swords clanged, people screamed in fury or pain, and it was chaos.
My first instinct was to help. However, we had a bigger threat to deal with—there were twelve mermaids in the water, holding hands and creating some kind of spell circle. They’d thrown the barrage of ice spears. They were also responsible for growing the one kraken into a tentacled skyscraper.
Dryx had turned away from fighting the kaiju lobstrosity. She was making her way through the ranks of the flying fish, making sushi, flying with such speed and elegance it was like watching a ballerina with a chainsaw, or a figure skater with dual .45 pistols. It was grace in motion. It was swords, death, and feathered wings.
If I hadn’t loved that sky warrior before that moment, I loved her then. “Lalindryx! I need your help!”
The kaiju lobstrosity unleashed another scream. Whatever Geeze had done to the massive thing, it was shaking the magic off.
While the white-and-pink family fought the Foulwater defenders around me, the other two families were rallying their soldiers for another run at our walls. We were about to be swarmed by the Aquaterreb.
I hoped to end things before that happened, but first, the kaiju needed to be dealt with.
I soared over, flying as fast as I could. Dryx kept up. “You hit it high,” I told her. “Go for the eyes. I’ll hit it low. We just need to get its attention. We have to lead it away from the wall.”
“Then what?” she shrieked.
I grinned. “Then we end the magic that turned the tide of battle. And I find a way to cut off the head of the serpent.”
Dryx flew around a sky full of tentacles, ducked antennae, and slipped through the giant pincers trying to crush her like a fly. She did a complicated somersault in the air, and yes, she reached the kaiju’s face. She chopped a sword into one of the thing’s beady black eyes.
As for me, I summoned a shitload of stone from my wall, and I hurled it into the belly of the thing. I cracked through its exoskeleton. Yellow ichor oozed out, and the stench turned my stomach. It smelled like seafood diarrhea.
I was going to take care of the smell with fire. I exhaled an inferno into the thing’s cracked armor.
I could only imagine what I looked like, held aloft by wings, my tail hanging down as I breathed fire on the lobster as its tentacles boiled around me. That was a comic book spread if there ever was one.
I winged away before the pincers could snap me in two. Dryx was with me. Yes, we’d gotten the kaiju’s attention, and it waded away from the wall. It had wanted to party on the New Pier, and we were totally killjoys. Now it was trying to get revenge.
It surged forward. Again, all that sea meat in motion sent waves surging. Again, the merfolk and their kraken were washed back from the wall. The flying fish family had gotten to the other side, but their reinforcements weren’t stabbing my people in their backs.
I spied the dozen mermaids in the water and came down right in the middle of them. They were in their fish-tail form. Normally, they would’ve swum away quickly, but I’d surprised them. I clawed through one and bit another in half. The tang of the blood mixed with the saltwater, and for a second, I was lost in the bloody froth even as the shakti from the kills refueled me.
I swam deeper, before turning a somersault in the water. Then I worked my tail until I was going fast enough to break the surface. I tore out of the water.
And yes, the kaiju was shrinking.
Dryx wasn’t going to let this opportunity get away from her. She slashed off a tentacle, then a pincer, and then stabbed out its other eye. She then flew around, slicing off antennae before driving both of her swords through the lobster’s head and into the thing’s brain. Goodbye, Kraken, and good riddance.
The dozen mermaids must’ve combined their power to throw the ice spears and to grow the one kraken into an Ebirah-sized monster. I’d disrupted the merfolk’s spell circle, but they might come back together at any minute. I needed to get my plan going.
Luck was with me.
I spied Ibbithy racing under the water, charging the wall. She must’ve been sitting back, directing her troops. Or maybe she’d been part of the spell circle. Regardless, she was there, and I flew down. I grabbed her with my front claws and shook her trident out of her arms. I then rose in the air. Other mermaids flung javelins, but Dryx flew in behind me and batted them away with her sword. The sky warrior then soared with me away from the fighting.
I raced upward, rising higher and higher with the mermaid princess. My claws were stuck in her weird water armor, which was translucent, but not transparent, so I couldn’t get a good look at her naked body. That was probably fortunate. I needed to focus. “Ibbithy, you’re going to listen to me. And you’re going to help me.”
“Never!” the red-haired mermaid shrieked. She wrestled with me, trying to slip away, but I held her. Everything depended on it.
“Dryx!” I called. “Who put you in that box with the treasure? Who was going to sell you to the Stallion King in Sweetleaf?”
The sky warrior flew closer. “It was Illbro Brinnib. I recognized him in the first fight. I hate him. I want him dead. And if I can’t kill him, I’ll kill you. Your people have no honor if they enslave and sell other races.”
I couldn’t see her face, but I felt her stop struggling. And when she spoke, her voice came out hurt. “No. He said this Uncle Dog person in your village led a raid and stole the treasure. They were the artifacts of our people, both the BuBano and the Brinnib families. Some were sacred. He was transporting them to a hidden Aqua
terrebian temple in the Uchina Sea. And you dirt worms stole them.”
I rumbled laughter. “Uncle Dog is a drunk and an idiot. The only thing he’d not have trouble raiding is his liquor cabinet. Illbro lied. He sold the Aquaterrebian treasure, both his family’s and yours, to the Kankar. Part of that treasure was Lalindryx here.”
Ibbithy wasn’t speaking. And every minute she stayed silent, more people died below.
I had to win her over. “You know me, Ibbithy. You know I could’ve killed you before, and I could kill you now. Call off the attack. And let me fight Illbro alone, in an arena of ice, on the center wall. It’s where we fought before. If I win, you all should leave and never fucking come back. If he wins, well, with me gone, you’ll take Foulwater. A lot of that treasure had been sold. We still have some left. We could work out a deal.”
Dryx knew her work there was done. She went down to help the defenders. With the sky warrior bringing death from above, our chances had increased by a thousand percent. I’d grown up with some of the toughest women in the galaxy, and even I found Dryx impressive.
More and more, my memories were coming back.
It was clear Ibbithy was shocked that Illbro would’ve sold a Jataksha woman. I was so glad that Eggero Khel had let that little piece of trivia slip. It seemed the Aquaterreb weren’t as inhuman as we thought.
Ibbithy surprised me. Without saying a word, she wrestled herself away from me. At the same time, her water armor repulsed my claws. She fell, striking the water in a perfect dive. With a twist of her fish tail, she streaked away.
Damn. I wasn’t sure if I’d reached her or not.
Figg and Rhee had cleared their section of the flying fish people, and they were charging in to help others. Between Figg, Rhee, and Dryx, those merfolk in pink-and-white armor retreated. Some dove into the water and others climbed back over the wall.
Even on the north wall, Geeze, Bragg Bharta, and the rajani were successfully beating back the third family of merfolk.
I flew toward the wall to help. That’s when I saw three Aquaterreb under the water, talking. One was Ibbithy. Was she talking to Illbro about my challenge? I had to hope she was.
Soaring over the wall, I picked up Figg, and she relaxed into me. I thought she’d be pissed. No, she was nearly out of shakti and too tired to go on. She had a gash on her arm, and her bident was stained right down to the leather grips.
“You know what to do, Finniwigg,” I said to her gently.
Then I set her on the wall. “Vankaat injit!” she called out. She swirled her hands and created a thirty-foot platform of ice on top of the wall, with ice stairs going down on each side. She slumped to the ground. She added another set of stairs to allow the merfolk on the town side of the wall a way to escape if they chose to. Casting that much Vanka magic had worn her out, Pentakorr brand or not.
I was going all in on Ibbithy. We had a connection. She’d felt it, and I thought from her silence, she had known the truth. Ask anyone in Foulwater, or anyone anywhere, about Uncle Dog. Everyone knew the truth. My hunting teacher, Liam Strider, would’ve called him an empty suit. There was no character there.
Illbro Brinnib, otherwise known as Squidbeard, had chosen the wrong fucking guy to accuse of such treachery.
I wasn’t going to wait. I was going to go find more pink fish men to kill. I have to admit, I didn’t like killing mermaids. Maybe I’d watched The Little Mermaid too many times. Killing the men I didn’t mind. They were far uglier, and so far, I’d not met one I liked.
I was relieved when I heard an echoing blast of someone blowing in a conch shell. It was an insistent sound, loud, and rather lonely. A wave of energy went through me, and though it didn’t hurt, I could feel the power of it. This was a call to cease fighting, I knew it.
I looked down. The flying fish people had stopped fighting. Dryx floated up, her swords bloody, but she didn’t have a wound on her.
Rhee went to hurl her chakram again, but I called out to her. “Rhee, if the merfolk aren’t fighting, don’t fight back. I have a deal going.”
The pink family fighters backed up and started up the steps of the ice stairs. They’d been called back to their people.
Three kraken came climbing up onto my platform of ice. The cold was making my claws chilly, but given what was going on, I wasn’t going to complain. It seemed my plan had worked.
Chapter Thirty-Two
AS A DRAGON, I STOOD on the ice platform covering the central section of our sea wall.
Figg dragged herself to her feet. Creating the arena had taken everything out of her. If the fight resumed, we wouldn’t have one of the most powerful sorceresses on Caranja to help us. No one had ever received the power of a Pentakorr brand, and my Figg had two now. How much more powerful would she be if she got the other three? I planned to find out.
I recognized Illbro and his black-ink beard. He was in black armor as well and he gripped a single-bladed battle-ax. He was in octopus mode, his tentacles slimy and dark.
Ibbithy looked shaken, and yet pretty, with her porcelain skin and red hair. Her watery armor gave her a certain grace to her. She’d retrieved another trident from somewhere and had a curved sword on her hip.
The last guy was a towering merman with a bright yellow beard and bright yellow eyes. He had a gold ring in his nose, and yes, he was in pink armor with a bright white trident. On his left arm was a pink buckler with a white symbol on it, that of a crescent moon surrounded by pale tentacles.
I shifted into my Homo Draconis form because I didn’t think Illbro would fight me as a full-sized dragon. I didn’t form wings because they’d only get in the way of a fight.
Dryx flew down to stand with me. Rhee limped up the steps. She had a wound on her thigh and a cut on her jawline that had soaked her neck in blood. She wasn’t wearing her dumb hat. I was glad. I liked her dirty blonde hair, full of bits, bobs, and possibly grenades.
The four of us stood facing the three merfolk leaders with their kraken behind them.
Illbro stood with his ax on the ice and his palms on the shaft. “You told Princess Ibbithy lies, dirt worm. I’ve never seen this winged woman before. Sure, maybe it wasn’t Uncle Dog that stole our treasures, but it was someone from Foulwater.”
Ibbithy’s mouth was small. She was upset, and her eyes blazed with anger. She knew the truth. She stood on two nice legs, muscled at the bottom and squishy at the top. I bet if I licked them they’d be salty.
Between the two stood the big merman, his frown nearly lost in his bright yellow beard. Water dripped on his rosy armor. He stood on white tentacles with pink suction cups. Behind them, the kraken waited, peering at us with their buggy black eyes.
Yellow Beard spoke. “I am Mudro Murderbo.”
I was glad I was a half-dragon at that point so I could hide my amusement. So the Aquaterreb liked their Bs. But Murderbo? Why not go with Murder Hobo and be done with it? Ah, such memories of gaming with my moms.
“Hello, Mudro Murderbo,” I said without a lick of humor. “We’ve killed a lot of your people. And we’ll kill more.”
Rhee interrupted me. “Aye, we fucking will. I don’t know what this is all about, but I say we all fight, and the winner takes it all. I’d love to murder every one of you fin lickers. I’d like to cut out your asshole and rip out your guts and then fry you the fuck up.”
“Rheesee!” Figg warned.
The elf was tired and probably pissed the battle wasn’t over and we weren’t celebrating.
The truth was, I wasn’t sure we could win, not going up against the three families. Even if we did win, we’d lose a lot of people. More children would be orphaned like Nameless and her sister, Fransigga.
Mudro’s nostril slits flared. “I know you, Rheesee Helleen. I know of your hatred of us. We hate you and the Myrra just as much. Your dragon man is right. Many of my people were killed. And I was told this was would be a simple matter by Illbro Brinnib. He failed to mention the dragon. And he failed to say he had sold this Ja
taksha woman to the Kankar.”
Dryx had her swords sheathed, but both of her hands were on the pommels. “The box had holes in it. I saw my captors. I saw him, Illbro Brinnib, talking with the deer men. He sold me along with merfolk treasures. I will never forgive your people for what they did to me. I would kill you all, and I could, even at the expense of this shit village. Yet, if you make things right, if you believe our story, then maybe you and your people will be allowed to leave.”
It was a good speech. I didn’t have much to add. “Illbro and I can fight. Just the two of us.”
“I am willing,” Squidbeard said. “But I am innocent. These dirt worms are lying.”
Mudro Murderbo slammed his trident onto the ice. “Let’s let the battle decide the truth. If you are innocent, Illbro, then you will be able to slay the dragon. If not? Then you’ll be a dead liar and good riddance.”
My plan was working perfectly.
I stepped forward holding the Calcifax staff in my claws. “Me against you. My staff against your ax. My spells against yours. Normally, I’d say we should only fight to first blood, but you’re too much an asshole. I want to see you dead.”
“To the death, then,” Mudro proclaimed.
Ibbithy threw me a worried glance. It was clear she didn’t want to see me die. “Or? The first to be knocked out of the arena will lose. Perhaps there has been enough bloodshed today.”
Old Yellow Beard nodded. “Agreed.”
“I will not lose!” Squidbeard screeched. “This dirt worm will die!”
He rode his boiling tentacles over. One slithered over to wrap itself around my leg, another grabbed my right arm, and he rose on the others. “Vankaat injit!”
Spears of ice sprang out of the ice. I was about to be impaled from every direction.
“Agnaat injit!” I burst into flames, forcing his tentacles off me, while at the same time, my scales thickened, and the ice spears shattered against my DarkArmor.
Illbro hissed at the pain. His flambéed tendrils smoked, but he wasn’t done. As he raised his ax, the ocean rose up around us. A torrent came hurling down toward me. All that water might kill me. At the very least, it would break bones.